Status Updates From Western Lit Survival Kit: H...

"It's hard to escape the conclusion that Shakespeare meant this play as an attack on anti-Semitism" [sic].

IS IT????

"Not everyone can honestly say that they enjoy King Lear, but if you don't enjoy Twelfth Night, shoot the director."

hmm. okay i think if your goal is to humorously but genuinely summarize othello you have to say the words racism and black more than once. "othello is an idiot plot there's no reason for othello to believe iago" Address Me 🐘

rating spenser as more accessible than shakespeare is crazy. no he is not

"[Marlowe's Dido play] was probably coauthored by Thomas Nashe, which would explain the part where a man has sex with a woman."

"Spenser, whose work could be used as a form of birth control"

“It’s a curious fact that the more challenging a work of literature is, the more likely the reader is to fall asleep facedown in its pages. Conversely, even the most scornful reader of Dan Brown effortlessly stays awake through his books.”

NOT ME!!! I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE READING THAT SHIT!!!

"Apparently, [Vergil] spent his life writing books in a room by himself. Biographical tradition depicts him as shy, sickly, and gay. However, those biographers may simply have been speculating based on the fact that he wrote poetry."

CATULLUS INVENTOR OF HTE GIRLFRIEND

"Romans shared our basic frivolity: there was no smut too low for them, and no complaint too trivial. They loved sarcasm, gossip, and actors. In fact, by the time of the Silver Age, Romans are not just Americans, but actually New Yorkers."

this is true i was there

“Many of the writers we will meet in the coming pages learned these dead languages at ages as young as five. Now they are dead themselves. Was it worth it? We may never know.”

it’s giving philomena cunk

“Paradise Lost is a work of acknowledged genius. It is also about as much fun as being trapped in a freezer.”

Laughed out loud at the orthodontist.

“This line is by far the most famous in the book, because it is as far as most people get.”

Not even technically on page 1. I’m on page xi, the first page of the introduction and I’m already giggling to myself